VIta means life

For centuries, scurvy was a real scourge among seamen and explorers, and no one knew how to combat it. Rickets, which afflicted small children, pellagra, beriberi and other diseases also remained an enigma.

In 1881, Nikolai Lunin, a Russian physician, put forward the hypothesis of the existence of some substances that are essential for life. These substances were isolated in their pure form more than 30 years later by K.Funk, a Polish researcher, who called them vitamins - “carriers of life”. Today we know some 30 vitamins and vitamin-like substances. Scurvy, rickets, beriberi and pellagra have been established to be all avitaminoses, i.e., diseases caused by the lack or deficiency of one vitamin or another in the organism.

Nowadays doctors come across avitaminoses comparatively rarely. Other problems connected with vitamins attract much more attention.

Our scientists are of the opinion that nucleic acids play the main part in the process of growth and propagation of cells. They proved that vitamin C (ascorbic acid) regulates one of the stages in the formation of desoxyribonucleic acid – the famous DNA.

Vitamin K, one of the “youngest” vitamins, discovered only some 30 years ago, is of great importance for the proper coagulation of blood. It is essential for the formation of prothrombin, a proteic substance necessary for clotting a blood vessel to stop a hemorrhage.

In 1942, Academician Al.Palladin, a prominent Russian biochemist, and his staff synthesized vikasol, a new preparation, which contains an analogue of vitamin K. During World War II, vikasol won a good repute for itself among army doctors. Injected intramuscularly or intravenously, it quickly stops various hemorrhages.

Now it is used as a preparation against inflammation and as a means for increasing the resistance of organisms to radioactive irradiation. But vitamin K is essential not only for blood clotting. It plays an active role in the so-called tissue breathing of the organism’s cells, in the metabolism. It is as necessary for each living cell as air is vital for man.

The doctors use vitamins on a wide scale of treatment – with the aid of vitamins they influence the metabolism in the direction they want, and increase the resistance of the organism to various diseases.

For instance, orotic acid, a substance which possesses vitamin-like properties, and which is a factor for growth, is used to intensify the contracting function of the myocardium, when the latter has been disrupted by prolonged stress.

The preparation Kalium orotium is used to treat such a grave and dangerous disease as a large-focal infarct of the myocardium (heart failure). The use of this preparation (in combination with folic acid and vitamin B12) at the clinic made it possible to decrease the number of deaths from this disease. Apart from this, the patients’ blood pressure improves and they recover much more quickly and are even able to go back to their usual work.

Good results have been obtained by administrating Kalium orotium to patients with other cardio-vascular disorders.

The researchers think, that this preparation will possibly be used to treat ulcers of the stomach and duodenum, to speed up the healing of wounds and burns and also other diseases and traumas, when the organism needs an accelerated synthesis of protein.

Active words and expressions.

Scurvy, beriberi, pellagra, deficiency, avitaminosis, to inject, to play an active role, inflammation, to obtain, wound, burn, to improve, to accelerate, resistance.